CPP takes back cooperation in Duterte's drug war, calls for end to 'madness'

From InterAksyon (Aug 13): CPP takes back cooperation in Duterte's drug war, calls for end to 'madness'



New Peoples Army cadre on patrol in the hinterlands.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has taken back its declaration of support for President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, which it said "has rapidly spiraled into a frenzied campaign of extra-judicial killings and vigilante murders perpetrated by the police and by police-linked criminal syndicates."

The CPP statement, released Saturday, also called on "all democratic forces" to "unite and demand justice and an end to the madness of police and vigilante killings" and "to defend human rights."

Nevertheless, it said, "in line with standing orders, the New People's Army will continue to intensify its operations to arrest and disarm drug trade operators and protectors."

"However, these will no longer be considered as cooperative with the Duterte regime's undemocratic and anti-people 'war on drugs'," it added.

At the same time, it assured that the NPA "will continue to exercise due process in dealing with suspects, such as those PNP officers presently in custody in Compostela Valley and Surigao del Sur."

In early July, after Duterte invited their support, the CPP ordered the NPA to assist the new administration's campaign to stamp out the illegal drug trade, a pledge that helped catapult the former Davao City mayor to the presidency.

However, in its latest statement, the CPP noted that "nearly 1,000 people have been killed in just a little more than one month" since Duterte assumed office while "the rights of tens upon thousands of people are being violated as the criminal justice system is upturned."

Estimates of the toll from the administration's anti-drug campaign have deaths climbing well beyond the 900 mark, both from what police describe as shootouts or attempts to resist arrest during operations as vigilante-style summary executions, with the victims often dumped in the streets with signs accusing them of being pushers

But the CPP also accused police officials of carrying out summary killings, including of suspects already in custody.

"Duterte's 'drug war' has clearly become anti-people and anti-democratic," it said, with Duterte's assurance of protection for law enforcers coupled with his "public declarations of contempt against human rights" providing immunity to abuses.

The CPP accused Duterte of becoming "so full of himself and intoxicated with the vast power he is not used to handle that he thinks he can get away with upturning the criminal judicial system and denouncing people for defending human rights," as well as threatening martial law.

It also noted that the "unmitigated violence" has claimed "people at the lowest rungs of the criminal syndicate ladder" even as "suspected big drug lords and their protectors are afforded courtesy calls to Malacanang, accommodations in Camp Crame's guest house and preliminary investigations by the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation)," an obvious reference to the government officials and businessmen publicly accused by Duterte of involvement in the drug trade.

"The worst that they have been made to undergo is to suffer the lectures of" Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa, the CPP said.

It also said Duterte's penchant for publicly naming suspects sans proof has turned the principle of presumption innocence on its head.

"What was before the burden of the accuser to prove someone's guilt is now the burden of the accused to prove his innocence," the CPP said, adding that Duterte "could not even tell the people how the lists were drawn. It is a mystery even to the chief intelligence officer and head of the PNP."

However, the CPP predicted that Duterte's war on drugs would fail "because it does not address the socio-economic roots of the problem," citing the experience of other countries such as Mexico and Thailand.

Instead, it said, "the 'drug war' is set to spiral into a war among the criminal drug syndicates, between one narco-politician against another, using the resources of the state and to further entrench themselves in the reactionary state."

"It would be no surprise that the information made public by Duterte about police protectors, narco-politicians and judges were fed to him by rival criminal syndicates," it said.

The CPP said the most effective way of combating drugs "is by rousing the people and mobilizing them to become active participants in social revolution" even as they wage "revolutionary struggle to overthrow the system that perpetuates it as well as other forms of oppression."

http://interaksyon.com/article/131395/cpp-takes-back-cooperation-in-dutertes-drug-war-calls-for-end-to-madness